This is a posthumous collection of Dahl's stories, which were originally published in the 50s and 60s, and I found it to be something of a let-down. The big standard, "Lamb to the Slaughter" is included, as well as a few other macabre tales. But, for many of the stories, I found the endings either predictable or anticlimactic. It felt as though Dahl had left early drafts of these stories lying around, and after he died some precocious niece found them and decided to send them off to a publisher. I much preferred Switch Bitch.
That said, this isn't bad collection, per se. I was interested. There was a very clever story about poaching that kept my attention. Dahl still has that talent of starting a story with you expecting it to be about the initial set of characters and circumstances, and then altering the focus as he goes along.
I'd say that the endings were still consistently unsettling, although they were certainly less surprising than those in Switch Bitch, and I plan to get another collection for comparison's sake.
For the love of God, don't read the back of this book. You will know the endings to a few of the stories that otherwise would have been genuinely surprising. It is lame.
There isn't really anything else to say about this book, except that the paperback cover of it is eye-catching enough to prompt people to talk to me while I am trying to concentrate.
And that is my completely thrilling commentary on the book. Whee!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
I've completely lost my focus . . .
No one knows it, but that subject line is the punchline to one of my favorite one-panel comic strips of all time. I'll see what I can do about uploading it sometime.
I've decided that I should ease up on this blog a bit. By which I mean, not always restrict myself to posting when I have book reviews/commentary piling up in my brain. This should just be the place for my literature-minded comments, so look forward to more interesting links and musings mixed in with book reviews.
As I am in the middle of reading Roald Dahl's collection of stories, Skin, right now, and as I would consider Dahl to be one of the few writers who has fascinated me my entire life (as a child, I quietly celebrated his birthday by reading as many of his books as I could on September 13th, I hope I remember that date correctly), I now have a very serious reason to visit the UK.
Check it out: http://www.roalddahlmuseum.org/
This guy is the pimp of children's books:
I've decided that I should ease up on this blog a bit. By which I mean, not always restrict myself to posting when I have book reviews/commentary piling up in my brain. This should just be the place for my literature-minded comments, so look forward to more interesting links and musings mixed in with book reviews.
As I am in the middle of reading Roald Dahl's collection of stories, Skin, right now, and as I would consider Dahl to be one of the few writers who has fascinated me my entire life (as a child, I quietly celebrated his birthday by reading as many of his books as I could on September 13th, I hope I remember that date correctly), I now have a very serious reason to visit the UK.
Check it out: http://www.roalddahlmuseum.org/
This guy is the pimp of children's books:
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
and now for something completely different . . .
"Why I Have No Taste" by Ben Hecht, from A Child of the Century
I prefer fine books and an exalted style and masterful probings. But when I read the other books, the ones sprung from equally ardent but smaller heads, I feel no lessened pleasure. I supply, as well as I can, what is missing. I skip what is too untrue. I am content with their smaller ambition. I do not praise them after they are closed, but while I read them I am as pleased as if no better books existed.
When I was a literary critic in Chicago, writing in the most iconoclastic publication of our times, The Little Review, run by Margaret Anderson, I could never attack books. I wrote only of books I could praise. I was ready to undermine in print such institutions as marriage, democracy and heaven. But books I could never sabotage, any more than I could publicly hiss actors.
My chief drawback as a literary reviewer was not kindness, however, but an inability to read any book through the assaying scale of my culture. When I read David Graham Phillips I was not aware of having read Gogol. When I enjoyed Paul de Kock, I had no memories of the pleasures of Stendhal. Each one, at his own time, was as good as the other. And with such an attitude one can never go far as a critic.
I used to argue about this with my friend, Sasha. He was Alexander S. Kaun, a smoldering Muscovite come to Chicago after some ineffectual bomb-throwing in the north of Russia. Despite this political activity, he was, basically, not a politician but a man of letters. He later became Professor of Russian Literature at the University of California in Berkeley. I never saw him in his cap and gown, for he died before my travels led me to San Francisco Bay.
In his pre-professorial youth, we argued during all-night sessions such as only political caucuses hold nowadays. In that time, sweet pause before chaos, literature was a more burning issue than it is at present. It is now a bauble in the hands of publishers, critics and readers. It was then a secret flame in the hands of the dedicated.
My point of view infuriated Sasha. I professed not to see any difference between a beautiful object and an ordinary one. I said that I liked all books in the manner that I liked all girls who were presentable. When with a girl of moderate allure, I did not disdain her because there were lovelier specimens in the world. Rapture might be limited, but criticism was surely out of place. And what did one gain by making oneself constantly toe the mark of preference--except fewer delights? In loving, or reading, a man was a fool to sit in judgment when he might lie in pleasure.
This aesthetic was lineal descendant of my young self in the attic room where I had found no difference in the charms of Nick Carter and Hamlet, nor outside the room, between hired girls and high-school princesses. A mediocre book or woman never lessened my opinion of myself.
I have outgrown some of this wholeness. But culture that deprives one of the many joys of being uncultured still seems to me a misuse of the mind. I have railed often against books in discussions with their readers. But it was actually the readers I was fomenting. The books were innocent.
I prefer fine books and an exalted style and masterful probings. But when I read the other books, the ones sprung from equally ardent but smaller heads, I feel no lessened pleasure. I supply, as well as I can, what is missing. I skip what is too untrue. I am content with their smaller ambition. I do not praise them after they are closed, but while I read them I am as pleased as if no better books existed.
When I was a literary critic in Chicago, writing in the most iconoclastic publication of our times, The Little Review, run by Margaret Anderson, I could never attack books. I wrote only of books I could praise. I was ready to undermine in print such institutions as marriage, democracy and heaven. But books I could never sabotage, any more than I could publicly hiss actors.
My chief drawback as a literary reviewer was not kindness, however, but an inability to read any book through the assaying scale of my culture. When I read David Graham Phillips I was not aware of having read Gogol. When I enjoyed Paul de Kock, I had no memories of the pleasures of Stendhal. Each one, at his own time, was as good as the other. And with such an attitude one can never go far as a critic.
I used to argue about this with my friend, Sasha. He was Alexander S. Kaun, a smoldering Muscovite come to Chicago after some ineffectual bomb-throwing in the north of Russia. Despite this political activity, he was, basically, not a politician but a man of letters. He later became Professor of Russian Literature at the University of California in Berkeley. I never saw him in his cap and gown, for he died before my travels led me to San Francisco Bay.
In his pre-professorial youth, we argued during all-night sessions such as only political caucuses hold nowadays. In that time, sweet pause before chaos, literature was a more burning issue than it is at present. It is now a bauble in the hands of publishers, critics and readers. It was then a secret flame in the hands of the dedicated.
My point of view infuriated Sasha. I professed not to see any difference between a beautiful object and an ordinary one. I said that I liked all books in the manner that I liked all girls who were presentable. When with a girl of moderate allure, I did not disdain her because there were lovelier specimens in the world. Rapture might be limited, but criticism was surely out of place. And what did one gain by making oneself constantly toe the mark of preference--except fewer delights? In loving, or reading, a man was a fool to sit in judgment when he might lie in pleasure.
This aesthetic was lineal descendant of my young self in the attic room where I had found no difference in the charms of Nick Carter and Hamlet, nor outside the room, between hired girls and high-school princesses. A mediocre book or woman never lessened my opinion of myself.
I have outgrown some of this wholeness. But culture that deprives one of the many joys of being uncultured still seems to me a misuse of the mind. I have railed often against books in discussions with their readers. But it was actually the readers I was fomenting. The books were innocent.
A Treasury of Royal Scandals by Michael Farquhar
The full title of this book reads: A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories of History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors.
Damn.
How could it possibly deliver? The paperback cover is a little cheeky drawing of buxom female member of royalty, all done up in the proper attire, with a smirk and a raised eyebrow on her face, and an anonymous hand down her front. Scandalous, indeed.
First of all, I genuinely believe that anyone who isn't interested in the naughty behavior of the European monarchs is either a liar, or someone I'm not going to invite over for dinner. This kind of stuff is where gossip hounds and history buffs can finally meet, their skills and interests finally converging after years of teasing each other on the playground.
What matters here aren't the dates, but who did what to whom, whether the action in question is fuck, kill, excommunicate, behead, etc. is inconsequential - the stories are great.
I'm one of those people who would never in her right mind spend money on a gossip rag. I don't care enough about Angelina & Brad, or even Britney, to ever spend hard-earned money on one of those things. However, when I am waiting in line for something, or at someone else's house with idle time, I will make a beeline for those same gossip rags. In a way, Treasury is a compromise for people like me.
You can satisfy your gossipy half by reading about who married whom, and your intellectual half by telling yourself, "It's practically history." No wonder this thing is a national bestseller.
Farquhar arranges the stories by theme, rather than chronology, which also gives it a fresh feeling. First we have transgressions of various important personages coinciding with the seven deadly sins. Then a little of horrible marriages, followed by horrible family relations, then horrible papal behavior, then horrible deaths, etc. At first it was confusing, but I came to appreciate it by the end.
If you think you will like this book, you will. I had my standards set pretty high, but there is behavior detailed in this book that genuinely surprised and disgusted me. It was all really really interesting, too. The descriptions of the inbred royal family members is especially enlightening.
I couldn't single out a single act, or even a list, of my favorite things detailed in this book. If you want a STAR magazine version of European history, I highly recommend Treasury. It's an easy read that can be done in chunks, if necessary, it's very entertaining, and it has short chapters. Even illustrations from the time period. What else could you possibly want?!
Damn.
How could it possibly deliver? The paperback cover is a little cheeky drawing of buxom female member of royalty, all done up in the proper attire, with a smirk and a raised eyebrow on her face, and an anonymous hand down her front. Scandalous, indeed.
First of all, I genuinely believe that anyone who isn't interested in the naughty behavior of the European monarchs is either a liar, or someone I'm not going to invite over for dinner. This kind of stuff is where gossip hounds and history buffs can finally meet, their skills and interests finally converging after years of teasing each other on the playground.
What matters here aren't the dates, but who did what to whom, whether the action in question is fuck, kill, excommunicate, behead, etc. is inconsequential - the stories are great.
I'm one of those people who would never in her right mind spend money on a gossip rag. I don't care enough about Angelina & Brad, or even Britney, to ever spend hard-earned money on one of those things. However, when I am waiting in line for something, or at someone else's house with idle time, I will make a beeline for those same gossip rags. In a way, Treasury is a compromise for people like me.
You can satisfy your gossipy half by reading about who married whom, and your intellectual half by telling yourself, "It's practically history." No wonder this thing is a national bestseller.
Farquhar arranges the stories by theme, rather than chronology, which also gives it a fresh feeling. First we have transgressions of various important personages coinciding with the seven deadly sins. Then a little of horrible marriages, followed by horrible family relations, then horrible papal behavior, then horrible deaths, etc. At first it was confusing, but I came to appreciate it by the end.
If you think you will like this book, you will. I had my standards set pretty high, but there is behavior detailed in this book that genuinely surprised and disgusted me. It was all really really interesting, too. The descriptions of the inbred royal family members is especially enlightening.
I couldn't single out a single act, or even a list, of my favorite things detailed in this book. If you want a STAR magazine version of European history, I highly recommend Treasury. It's an easy read that can be done in chunks, if necessary, it's very entertaining, and it has short chapters. Even illustrations from the time period. What else could you possibly want?!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Okay, for once in a long while I can honestly say I read something that did not live up to my expectations.
Perhaps having recently read Camus's The Plague made me desensitized to the contagious outbreak/quarantine aspects of this story, because in this story I found them to be agonizingly drawn out. Yes, of course the government is going to round everybody up into camps of horrible conditions, of course they are going to say it is for their own good, of course it won't be, of course members of the government will start getting sick themselves, blah blah. Standard. But.
Let me back up. Blindness's strengths lie in the nature of the outbreak, which is one of (you guessed it!) blindness. A strange blindness where the afflicted can only perceive a "milky sea of white." Naturally, this white blindness was described repeatedly throughout the book, which felt repetitive and sometimes annoyed me. I was very interested in the bigger picture of a blindness epidemic, but Saramago focused on a small group of individuals reacting to the outbreak. It's not his fault he didn't give me what I wanted, and he's not a poor writer because of it, but I certainly felt unsatisfied when I was done with the book.
It opens very strongly, though - the sudden and inexplicable appearance of a medically unknown type of blindess is described effectively, stunningly, and quite beautifully. As the instances of blindness increase, a quarantine is established, and all the blind (or exposed to blind) people are sent to a facility that used to be an insane asylum. This I found to be unnecessarily overt thematic foreshadowing, why not a mere abandoned hospital? I'm not so stupid that I don't understand quarantined people, especially blind ones, will eventually display myriad types of insanity. Anyway.
Our plot focuses around one woman, the wife of the opthamologist who examined the very first person to go blind. After the first blind man visited the opthamologist's office, the doctor goes blind himself. As he is being loaded into the ambulance that will undoubtedly take him to the quarantine, his wife lies and says she, as well, has been striken with the illness. She never does, however, go blind, and she becomes the vehicle for exploring the disintegration of society. She is, literally, the only one who can see it.
Saramago's style of dialogue is dense. There is almost constant dialogue - many nameless characters are speaking, and their declarations are separated only by commas. There are few paragraph breaks, as well, so every chapter feels relentless. This is very effective in conveying a sense of blindness - tracking the speaker of the dialogue is practically as difficult for the reader as it is for the blind, and all the characters are reduced to little more than disembodied voices calling out repetitive phrases and worries.
I'm not sure what else to really say about this book. It was certainly interesting - I was never bored while reading it, and the thought of -everyone- being blind is much more terrifying than I initially gave it credit for. There are, ironically, very intense visuals that I retain from the story, and it definitely made an impact on me. However, there was just something missing that made it hard for me to completely engage with the story or the characters.
I have the feeling that, over time, this will seem like a much better book than it seemed when I first completed it. I just wanted to write about it now, while it's still fresh in my mind. Maybe I'll come back to it as I process it. Or at least when I'm not frantically writing during my lunch break. Ha ha.
Perhaps having recently read Camus's The Plague made me desensitized to the contagious outbreak/quarantine aspects of this story, because in this story I found them to be agonizingly drawn out. Yes, of course the government is going to round everybody up into camps of horrible conditions, of course they are going to say it is for their own good, of course it won't be, of course members of the government will start getting sick themselves, blah blah. Standard. But.
Let me back up. Blindness's strengths lie in the nature of the outbreak, which is one of (you guessed it!) blindness. A strange blindness where the afflicted can only perceive a "milky sea of white." Naturally, this white blindness was described repeatedly throughout the book, which felt repetitive and sometimes annoyed me. I was very interested in the bigger picture of a blindness epidemic, but Saramago focused on a small group of individuals reacting to the outbreak. It's not his fault he didn't give me what I wanted, and he's not a poor writer because of it, but I certainly felt unsatisfied when I was done with the book.
It opens very strongly, though - the sudden and inexplicable appearance of a medically unknown type of blindess is described effectively, stunningly, and quite beautifully. As the instances of blindness increase, a quarantine is established, and all the blind (or exposed to blind) people are sent to a facility that used to be an insane asylum. This I found to be unnecessarily overt thematic foreshadowing, why not a mere abandoned hospital? I'm not so stupid that I don't understand quarantined people, especially blind ones, will eventually display myriad types of insanity. Anyway.
Our plot focuses around one woman, the wife of the opthamologist who examined the very first person to go blind. After the first blind man visited the opthamologist's office, the doctor goes blind himself. As he is being loaded into the ambulance that will undoubtedly take him to the quarantine, his wife lies and says she, as well, has been striken with the illness. She never does, however, go blind, and she becomes the vehicle for exploring the disintegration of society. She is, literally, the only one who can see it.
Saramago's style of dialogue is dense. There is almost constant dialogue - many nameless characters are speaking, and their declarations are separated only by commas. There are few paragraph breaks, as well, so every chapter feels relentless. This is very effective in conveying a sense of blindness - tracking the speaker of the dialogue is practically as difficult for the reader as it is for the blind, and all the characters are reduced to little more than disembodied voices calling out repetitive phrases and worries.
I'm not sure what else to really say about this book. It was certainly interesting - I was never bored while reading it, and the thought of -everyone- being blind is much more terrifying than I initially gave it credit for. There are, ironically, very intense visuals that I retain from the story, and it definitely made an impact on me. However, there was just something missing that made it hard for me to completely engage with the story or the characters.
I have the feeling that, over time, this will seem like a much better book than it seemed when I first completed it. I just wanted to write about it now, while it's still fresh in my mind. Maybe I'll come back to it as I process it. Or at least when I'm not frantically writing during my lunch break. Ha ha.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
Be careful, guys. I recommend a lot of things that are a tad "off," you know. Like, about serial killers and sexual perversions and whatnot. But those books have got nothing on this. Holy crap.
Here is what the quotes on the back of the book say:
"Bataille's works . . . indicated the aesthetic possibilities of pornography as an art form: Story of the Eye being the most accomplished artistically of all pornographic prose I've read." -Susan Sontag
and then the intense one:
"Bataille denudes himself, exposes himself, his exhibitionism aims at destroying all literature. He has a holocaust of words. Bataille speaks about man's condition, not his nature. His tone recalls the scornful aggressiveness of the surrealist. Bataille has survived the death of God. In him, reality is conflict." -Jean Paul Sartre
And, get this, the book is only ONE HUNDRED PAGES long! That's it! For so much intensity?! I could hardly believe it.
And I didn't believe it. Not at all. Within the first chapter, there is some really disgusting talk of peeing into cunts and whatnot. Not exactly what I expected. The perversions only get worse (or better?). I felt duped.
Let me back up.
The story revolves around the narrator, a young man, a woman he meets when he is young and who he discovers his sexuality with, and two other significant figures: an innocent young girl they corrupt and drive insane, and a wealthy Englishman who provides monetary support when they are running from the law. A bullfighter and a priest both provide important symbolic roles, even as very minor characters.
If I were to outline for you exactly what these two main characters participate in, you might not believe me. Really, you wouldn't. I don't want to ruin anything, though, in case you do read the book. Let's just say - deriving sexual pleasure from pissing on the face of a dead woman with open eyes is not the worst of it. Not by a long shot.
But I had the stomach, I muscled through. Despite the depravity, one thing this book definitely ISN'T is boring. About fifty pages through, I finally took a break and stopped to think about what I'd been reading. I didn't find any of it to be titillating, and found the majority of it to be so disgusting that I couldn't refrain from actually frowning as I read it. And then something happened. It hit me. The point of the book came shining down like sun on an otherwise gross San Francisco afternoon.
Even sexual meaning is arbitrary. Don't just gloss over that sentence. Really read it, and think about. In a culture obsessed with sexual norms that are, by the by, very straight and narrow, the notion that our love of pecks on the cheek and the missionary position (hallmarks of chaste, proper sexual union) is just as legitimate as a sexual desire to drop soft-boiled eggs into a toilet and then pee on them is a SHOCK.
People will accept perversion, but only one step at a time. They say, okay, well, I guess oral sex is all right. Or, I'm okay with men sleeping together, just as long as I don't have to see them kiss in public (or some variation thereof). Fetishes are recognized. We can thank (?) the internet in large part for making all kinds of pornography available and transparent. But let me tell you - I've been on the internet, and I have not seen anything like what was described in this book written before we even had the goddamn television.
Only through extremes, I suppose, will we truly be able to grasp that all meaning, even sexual meaning, is arbitrary, and therefore equally valid. I do not want to participate in ANYTHING they described in this book (one thing, maybe, but it's very tame), and yet by the end I could see how it was sexy. I could understand. It's a matter of association, really, and how the manner in which we first encounter sexuality can set a standard for the rest of our adult lives in terms of sexual and romantic preferences.
Go through the book of your life and put italics in random places, and the "meaning of life" for you can change drastically. That is what this book made me realize about my sexual preferences. If, for whatever I reason, I had had more cause to remember the "Little Mermaid" themed fantasies I had as a child, and ignored the traditional "Hollywood star at a fancy party" ones, then I could have turned into a person who wants to fuck fish. I am, also, a potential pervert. So we all are. And, weirdly, that's something to celebrate.
I'm not sure if I'm getting this across properly, because I'm very tired and I just wanted to write down some of my thoughts before my enthusiasm for the book wears off.
I guess what I'm saying is, Bataille uses depraved imagery to depict a divine truth about humanity - our possibilities are endless, even if they are arbitrary. Meaning is a complete jumble, and most of the meanings we choose for ourselves are so naturally developed that we don't consciously realize we're choosing them. And yet, those same very natural, very normal and indispensable meanings would be rejected by everyone else. The protagonist of the book declares that he likes not "pleasures of the flesh," but "dirty" things. He, the corpse-loving piss-playing menstrua-sniffing murderer, is offended by the idea of "pleasures of the flesh." (A phrase that, incidentally, always makes me think of soft-core porn. Can you conceive of soft-core porn as offensive?)
And, although this paints a picture of complete isolation at your very core, your sexuality, I don't think that's the point. If you let your disgustingness develop naturally, you can easily find the right people to be disgusting with.
Even writing this I am getting re-excited! What a great book. What a great great book. Suddenly, the quotes on the back no longer seem overly intense, but not intense enough. I'm shocked.
[I only recommend if you have both a strong stomach and a strong mind. If you do, then I recommend highly, more highly than anything else I've reviewed.]
Here is what the quotes on the back of the book say:
"Bataille's works . . . indicated the aesthetic possibilities of pornography as an art form: Story of the Eye being the most accomplished artistically of all pornographic prose I've read." -Susan Sontag
and then the intense one:
"Bataille denudes himself, exposes himself, his exhibitionism aims at destroying all literature. He has a holocaust of words. Bataille speaks about man's condition, not his nature. His tone recalls the scornful aggressiveness of the surrealist. Bataille has survived the death of God. In him, reality is conflict." -Jean Paul Sartre
And, get this, the book is only ONE HUNDRED PAGES long! That's it! For so much intensity?! I could hardly believe it.
And I didn't believe it. Not at all. Within the first chapter, there is some really disgusting talk of peeing into cunts and whatnot. Not exactly what I expected. The perversions only get worse (or better?). I felt duped.
Let me back up.
The story revolves around the narrator, a young man, a woman he meets when he is young and who he discovers his sexuality with, and two other significant figures: an innocent young girl they corrupt and drive insane, and a wealthy Englishman who provides monetary support when they are running from the law. A bullfighter and a priest both provide important symbolic roles, even as very minor characters.
If I were to outline for you exactly what these two main characters participate in, you might not believe me. Really, you wouldn't. I don't want to ruin anything, though, in case you do read the book. Let's just say - deriving sexual pleasure from pissing on the face of a dead woman with open eyes is not the worst of it. Not by a long shot.
But I had the stomach, I muscled through. Despite the depravity, one thing this book definitely ISN'T is boring. About fifty pages through, I finally took a break and stopped to think about what I'd been reading. I didn't find any of it to be titillating, and found the majority of it to be so disgusting that I couldn't refrain from actually frowning as I read it. And then something happened. It hit me. The point of the book came shining down like sun on an otherwise gross San Francisco afternoon.
Even sexual meaning is arbitrary. Don't just gloss over that sentence. Really read it, and think about. In a culture obsessed with sexual norms that are, by the by, very straight and narrow, the notion that our love of pecks on the cheek and the missionary position (hallmarks of chaste, proper sexual union) is just as legitimate as a sexual desire to drop soft-boiled eggs into a toilet and then pee on them is a SHOCK.
People will accept perversion, but only one step at a time. They say, okay, well, I guess oral sex is all right. Or, I'm okay with men sleeping together, just as long as I don't have to see them kiss in public (or some variation thereof). Fetishes are recognized. We can thank (?) the internet in large part for making all kinds of pornography available and transparent. But let me tell you - I've been on the internet, and I have not seen anything like what was described in this book written before we even had the goddamn television.
Only through extremes, I suppose, will we truly be able to grasp that all meaning, even sexual meaning, is arbitrary, and therefore equally valid. I do not want to participate in ANYTHING they described in this book (one thing, maybe, but it's very tame), and yet by the end I could see how it was sexy. I could understand. It's a matter of association, really, and how the manner in which we first encounter sexuality can set a standard for the rest of our adult lives in terms of sexual and romantic preferences.
Go through the book of your life and put italics in random places, and the "meaning of life" for you can change drastically. That is what this book made me realize about my sexual preferences. If, for whatever I reason, I had had more cause to remember the "Little Mermaid" themed fantasies I had as a child, and ignored the traditional "Hollywood star at a fancy party" ones, then I could have turned into a person who wants to fuck fish. I am, also, a potential pervert. So we all are. And, weirdly, that's something to celebrate.
I'm not sure if I'm getting this across properly, because I'm very tired and I just wanted to write down some of my thoughts before my enthusiasm for the book wears off.
I guess what I'm saying is, Bataille uses depraved imagery to depict a divine truth about humanity - our possibilities are endless, even if they are arbitrary. Meaning is a complete jumble, and most of the meanings we choose for ourselves are so naturally developed that we don't consciously realize we're choosing them. And yet, those same very natural, very normal and indispensable meanings would be rejected by everyone else. The protagonist of the book declares that he likes not "pleasures of the flesh," but "dirty" things. He, the corpse-loving piss-playing menstrua-sniffing murderer, is offended by the idea of "pleasures of the flesh." (A phrase that, incidentally, always makes me think of soft-core porn. Can you conceive of soft-core porn as offensive?)
And, although this paints a picture of complete isolation at your very core, your sexuality, I don't think that's the point. If you let your disgustingness develop naturally, you can easily find the right people to be disgusting with.
Even writing this I am getting re-excited! What a great book. What a great great book. Suddenly, the quotes on the back no longer seem overly intense, but not intense enough. I'm shocked.
[I only recommend if you have both a strong stomach and a strong mind. If you do, then I recommend highly, more highly than anything else I've reviewed.]
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Four Letter Word: Invented Correspondences from the Edge of Modern Romance edited by J. Knelman and R. Porter
I've gotten really busy lately, unfortunately.
Well, it's fortunate. I actually obtained a job, which is seriously cutting into my time. You can expect this blog to be dormant until I've settled into my new schedule.
In the meantime, pick up Four Letter Word. It's a collection of fictional love letters written by a smorgasbord of authors from around the world. It's alternately sweet, funny, tragic, and so on. The introduction by the editor Rosalind Porter was inspiring enough for me to start up another blog to share letters I've written. I've placed a link to that new blog in the right-hand column, if you're interested. It's called "Anostrophe," the explanation of which is in its first post.
I've always enjoyed writing letters (anyone who knew me in high school knows that I took the whole "note passed in class" concept to another level), but I never get a chance to enjoy reading them. I've been told I'm most intimidating through writing, which is a much nicer explanation for why I've received so few letters during my life thus far than the one I like to fall back on: you're all lazy punks.
Anyway, as much as I loved composing and coveting the receiving of letters, I never really considered them an art unto themselves until reading this book. I knew that we could recognize the personal letters of already established authors as art, but I never felt as though one's writing ability could stand upon letters alone. I really responded to this collection, because it made me feel that I can cultivate letter-writing as an authentic and worthwhile form of writing. That may seem obvious, but in a world of not only e-mail but Facebook and MySpace wall posts, the concept of an actual "letter" is practically akin to myth.
I'd like to bring it back down to reality, if I might. If you don't read my letters, then at least read the letters in this book. They are better than anything I could ever write. The first one is from Mars to Earth, although there are more traditional love letters as well. Many have to do with family, and there is far more sadness than I expected, so if you're one of those "I'm not a sap, I'm not reading a mushy book of mindless cooings" kind of people, drop the bitterness and pick up the book instead. It covers all the bases.
Just read the first half or so (as far as I've gotten at the time of this writing) and try to tell me you don't wish you could either compose or receive such powerful condensed direct statements of emotion from one human to another. And even if you can tell me that, I won't believe you.
Well, it's fortunate. I actually obtained a job, which is seriously cutting into my time. You can expect this blog to be dormant until I've settled into my new schedule.
In the meantime, pick up Four Letter Word. It's a collection of fictional love letters written by a smorgasbord of authors from around the world. It's alternately sweet, funny, tragic, and so on. The introduction by the editor Rosalind Porter was inspiring enough for me to start up another blog to share letters I've written. I've placed a link to that new blog in the right-hand column, if you're interested. It's called "Anostrophe," the explanation of which is in its first post.
I've always enjoyed writing letters (anyone who knew me in high school knows that I took the whole "note passed in class" concept to another level), but I never get a chance to enjoy reading them. I've been told I'm most intimidating through writing, which is a much nicer explanation for why I've received so few letters during my life thus far than the one I like to fall back on: you're all lazy punks.
Anyway, as much as I loved composing and coveting the receiving of letters, I never really considered them an art unto themselves until reading this book. I knew that we could recognize the personal letters of already established authors as art, but I never felt as though one's writing ability could stand upon letters alone. I really responded to this collection, because it made me feel that I can cultivate letter-writing as an authentic and worthwhile form of writing. That may seem obvious, but in a world of not only e-mail but Facebook and MySpace wall posts, the concept of an actual "letter" is practically akin to myth.
I'd like to bring it back down to reality, if I might. If you don't read my letters, then at least read the letters in this book. They are better than anything I could ever write. The first one is from Mars to Earth, although there are more traditional love letters as well. Many have to do with family, and there is far more sadness than I expected, so if you're one of those "I'm not a sap, I'm not reading a mushy book of mindless cooings" kind of people, drop the bitterness and pick up the book instead. It covers all the bases.
Just read the first half or so (as far as I've gotten at the time of this writing) and try to tell me you don't wish you could either compose or receive such powerful condensed direct statements of emotion from one human to another. And even if you can tell me that, I won't believe you.
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